5 ms·

Closed borders, no students/backpackers, farmers unprepared to pay minimum wages to Australians is resulting in a lot of produce being plowed back into the grou

Closed borders, no students/backpackers, farmers unprepared to pay minimum wages to Australians is resulting in a lot of produce being plowed back into the ground. I just don't know how this economy keeps rolling. How can farmers meet the payments on their loans? Reading 'The great depression: A diary' and looking at the world today just shocks the hell out of me. We are following it step for step and the crash is going to be devastating.

tryonenow 6y ago
Wouldn't prices go up anyway if farmers were forced to pay higher wages for picking? I imagine the margin on vegetables is quite tiny...
Cederfjard 6y ago
Am I interpreting this correctly that there’s a minimum wage that applies to Australians but not foreigners, and farmers thus rely on foreign labor? Edit: In Sweden we have/have had similar situations with temporary immigrants that for example pick berries for exploitative wages, but that’s because there’s no actual minimum wage per se - in the rest of society decent wages are ensured by strong unions (except in areas where demand is high anyway, like say for software developers).
- dbetteridge 6y ago
  More like. I'll pay you minimum wage, but charge you exorbitant amounts for board and lodging and you have no choice because it's the middle of nowhere. Or for the extra dodgy types, cash payments below minimum wage because they know international workers are less likely to know their rights and be aware of what the minimum wage is.
  - rapnie 6y ago
    The first happens in The Netherlands on large scale, since they deregulated job agencies. There are 1,000's of shady ones, where administratively all is fine and dandy, but in practice foreign labour is paid far below minimum wage + they are often threatened to not speak up, passport taken, etc. This, btw, happens all across the EU is my impression. Modern-day slavery very much alive globally even!
    - dbetteridge 6y ago
      Sounds just like what happens in Australia, joy... Jobseeker agencies paid by the Federal government to 'place' workers, this doesn't factor in the jobs actually being suitable or useful mind. The workers on unemployment are also required to apply for a quota of jobs or risk losing their benefits, even though there may actually be no new jobs to apply for.
    - kungito 6y ago
      I've heard first hand about this happening in Denmark on a large scale as well. It's hard not believing the government knows about this but does nothing. I wouldn't call it slavery in this case because people come by buses from Poland and go back home after the work is done. They have their freedom of movement. It's just the origin countries are so much worse than the ones where they go to work
      - simiones 6y ago
        It's usually not even that they are so much worse. It's just that the monetary value differences make up the difference. These people can live a much better life in Poland with a Denmark subsistence wage, then they can in Poland with the minimum wage. So they sacrifice some months of their lives living in worse conditions in order to make some money for back home, where they can use that money to improve the lot of their children.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
    - kypro 6y ago
      The problem here is more of a supply / demand thing which you can't simply ignore that because the issue will never go away so long as the incentives for it exist. If farmers paid good wages they wouldn't need to rely on foreign labour and food prices would go up. This is a workable solution, but is is what people living in western countries want? We have the same issue here in the UK with the NHS.. We pay NHS workers terrible wages so we need to import foreign labour because wages aren't high enough to attract domestic workers. In one sense it's great because we get better health care than we would otherwise afford and foreigners have an opportunity to get better pay in the UK (even if it's bad by UK standards). I've found many people here get angry about what we pay NHS workers while also getting angry about NHS waiting times. If we wanted to we could increase wages which would either require resource cuts and lower output or higher taxes for the same level of care. It would also mean we wouldn't need to depend on foreign labour, but who benefits from this? By paying more foreigners now have less opportunity to move to the UK and British citizens have sub-par / higher cost health care. Presumably, it's the same with agricultural workers. Sure you can pay more, but who benefits from it? The root "problem" is that labour is extremely cheap outside of developed countries. Developed countries can cut themselves off from that labour supply if they like, but I have no idea what the economic incentive (or benefit) of doing so is for either the workers or the citizens. Call it modern-day slavery if you like but these are consensual working relationships, which presumably wouldn't take place if they didn't benefit both the worker and the employer. So long as labour remains cheap outside of the developed world a trade off will always exist – paying more will just mean higher prices for citizens and fewer opportunities for those living in the poorest parts of the world, but on the up side you can say you pay a fairer wage by your own national standards.
  - danjac 6y ago
    What Americans used to call the "company town".
- nness 6y ago
  Some of Australia's visa's require that the applicant spend a few months working on a farm, usually fruit-picking. These workers are still entitled to the same minimum wages (as far as I know) and other protections, in theory. (Australia's geographical isolation makes it difficult to attract seasonal workers, unlike throughout Europe where traveling for work is comparatively cheaper and easier.) However, farmers have always benefited from the fact that people wanted the visa more than the didn't want to work — many workers are taken advantage of. Now that there are none of these workers, farmers are having to complete for labor like anyone else and that is costing more than they intended.
  - nelsonmandela 6y ago
    In addition to supposedly paying them minimum wage - the farmers employ a racket where they charge the poor souls exorbitant rates to stay on the farm as it is rural and there is no other accommodation thereby bringing the effective minimum wage down significantly.
- swarnie_ 6y ago
  We have a similar situation in the UK where minimum wage is payed but work and living conditions are horrendous. No locals will do the work because... Why would you. Living in a caravan for the whole summer and working 12 hours a day isn't a good deal. Maybe its worth it if you intend to move back to a county where you get much better purchasing power?
- klingon78 6y ago
  I don’t mean to downplay this, but it’s similar to the migrant worker booms across the globe over past decades. For example, people from Central America trek up at risk of their lives through dangerous drug lord territories to get to US states where they can work illegally for less than minimum wage, then send that money back to their families because they can make much more doing that than they could at home and may have no other choice. The working and living conditions can be terrible, and answer is not to deport them or make their conditions worse; that hurts the host country as well as the workers and creates more division. Similar workers boosted the US culturally and economically because industry and governments embraced them for labor and taxes.
blazespin 6y ago
"We are following it step for step". Really? Top voted comment on Hacker News? Yikes. Things have really gone downhill around here. Stick to tech, folks. "During the early 1920s, for example, prices dropped a total of 20%. And during the worst years of the Great Depression, from 1930 to 1933, prices fell a total of 25%" I mean, the title of the article was even : "Food Prices Soar Globally" If you want to be a doomer, than at least compare it to the stagflation of the 70s, but honestly, that's probably not accurate either.
- nelsonmandela 6y ago
  That was in regards to following the diary step for step - Farmers plowing food back into the fields, enactment of minimum wage laws, booming house prices followed by a massive crash with nobody attending auctions, booming stock market with massive unemployment.
- octodog 6y ago
  The snark in this comment is completely unnecessary. It is better for everyone if you make your point in a more constructive manner.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - bondarchuk 6y ago
    Rant incoming. I, for one, appreciate it. This thing on HN where you have to beat around the bush and phrase your sentences objectively and in a general way, when everybody knows that you are just talking about a specific instance, saying things like "if you [x] then someone may respond [y]" when it is clear that someone literally said [x] so you can just say [y] in reply.. All that stuff is incredibly tiring to read IMHO. If you just want to call out someone's bullshit you should be able to do so in a straightforward manner and in a tone that corresponds with "calling out someone's bullshit". If we could just be a little bit more honest here I think it would be an improvement.
    - 6y ago
imutemyteam 6y ago
I really doubt that the backpacker community was the major labor source in Australia.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

tryonenow 6y ago

Wouldn't prices go up anyway if farmers were forced to pay higher wages for picking? I imagine the margin on vegetables is quite tiny...

Cederfjard 6y ago

Am I interpreting this correctly that there’s a minimum wage that applies to Australians but not foreigners, and farmers thus rely on foreign labor? Edit: In Sweden we have/have had similar situations with temporary immigrants that for example pick berries for exploitative wages, but that’s because there’s no actual minimum wage per se - in the rest of society decent wages are ensured by strong unions (except in areas where demand is high anyway, like say for software developers).

dbetteridge 6y ago
More like. I'll pay you minimum wage, but charge you exorbitant amounts for board and lodging and you have no choice because it's the middle of nowhere. Or for the extra dodgy types, cash payments below minimum wage because they know international workers are less likely to know their rights and be aware of what the minimum wage is.
- rapnie 6y ago
  The first happens in The Netherlands on large scale, since they deregulated job agencies. There are 1,000's of shady ones, where administratively all is fine and dandy, but in practice foreign labour is paid far below minimum wage + they are often threatened to not speak up, passport taken, etc. This, btw, happens all across the EU is my impression. Modern-day slavery very much alive globally even!
  - dbetteridge 6y ago
    Sounds just like what happens in Australia, joy... Jobseeker agencies paid by the Federal government to 'place' workers, this doesn't factor in the jobs actually being suitable or useful mind. The workers on unemployment are also required to apply for a quota of jobs or risk losing their benefits, even though there may actually be no new jobs to apply for.
  - kungito 6y ago
    I've heard first hand about this happening in Denmark on a large scale as well. It's hard not believing the government knows about this but does nothing. I wouldn't call it slavery in this case because people come by buses from Poland and go back home after the work is done. They have their freedom of movement. It's just the origin countries are so much worse than the ones where they go to work
    - simiones 6y ago
      It's usually not even that they are so much worse. It's just that the monetary value differences make up the difference. These people can live a much better life in Poland with a Denmark subsistence wage, then they can in Poland with the minimum wage. So they sacrifice some months of their lives living in worse conditions in order to make some money for back home, where they can use that money to improve the lot of their children.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - kypro 6y ago
    The problem here is more of a supply / demand thing which you can't simply ignore that because the issue will never go away so long as the incentives for it exist. If farmers paid good wages they wouldn't need to rely on foreign labour and food prices would go up. This is a workable solution, but is is what people living in western countries want? We have the same issue here in the UK with the NHS.. We pay NHS workers terrible wages so we need to import foreign labour because wages aren't high enough to attract domestic workers. In one sense it's great because we get better health care than we would otherwise afford and foreigners have an opportunity to get better pay in the UK (even if it's bad by UK standards). I've found many people here get angry about what we pay NHS workers while also getting angry about NHS waiting times. If we wanted to we could increase wages which would either require resource cuts and lower output or higher taxes for the same level of care. It would also mean we wouldn't need to depend on foreign labour, but who benefits from this? By paying more foreigners now have less opportunity to move to the UK and British citizens have sub-par / higher cost health care. Presumably, it's the same with agricultural workers. Sure you can pay more, but who benefits from it? The root "problem" is that labour is extremely cheap outside of developed countries. Developed countries can cut themselves off from that labour supply if they like, but I have no idea what the economic incentive (or benefit) of doing so is for either the workers or the citizens. Call it modern-day slavery if you like but these are consensual working relationships, which presumably wouldn't take place if they didn't benefit both the worker and the employer. So long as labour remains cheap outside of the developed world a trade off will always exist – paying more will just mean higher prices for citizens and fewer opportunities for those living in the poorest parts of the world, but on the up side you can say you pay a fairer wage by your own national standards.
- danjac 6y ago
  What Americans used to call the "company town".
nness 6y ago
Some of Australia's visa's require that the applicant spend a few months working on a farm, usually fruit-picking. These workers are still entitled to the same minimum wages (as far as I know) and other protections, in theory. (Australia's geographical isolation makes it difficult to attract seasonal workers, unlike throughout Europe where traveling for work is comparatively cheaper and easier.) However, farmers have always benefited from the fact that people wanted the visa more than the didn't want to work — many workers are taken advantage of. Now that there are none of these workers, farmers are having to complete for labor like anyone else and that is costing more than they intended.
- nelsonmandela 6y ago
  In addition to supposedly paying them minimum wage - the farmers employ a racket where they charge the poor souls exorbitant rates to stay on the farm as it is rural and there is no other accommodation thereby bringing the effective minimum wage down significantly.
swarnie_ 6y ago
We have a similar situation in the UK where minimum wage is payed but work and living conditions are horrendous. No locals will do the work because... Why would you. Living in a caravan for the whole summer and working 12 hours a day isn't a good deal. Maybe its worth it if you intend to move back to a county where you get much better purchasing power?
klingon78 6y ago
I don’t mean to downplay this, but it’s similar to the migrant worker booms across the globe over past decades. For example, people from Central America trek up at risk of their lives through dangerous drug lord territories to get to US states where they can work illegally for less than minimum wage, then send that money back to their families because they can make much more doing that than they could at home and may have no other choice. The working and living conditions can be terrible, and answer is not to deport them or make their conditions worse; that hurts the host country as well as the workers and creates more division. Similar workers boosted the US culturally and economically because industry and governments embraced them for labor and taxes.

blazespin 6y ago

"We are following it step for step". Really? Top voted comment on Hacker News? Yikes. Things have really gone downhill around here. Stick to tech, folks. "During the early 1920s, for example, prices dropped a total of 20%. And during the worst years of the Great Depression, from 1930 to 1933, prices fell a total of 25%" I mean, the title of the article was even : "Food Prices Soar Globally" If you want to be a doomer, than at least compare it to the stagflation of the 70s, but honestly, that's probably not accurate either.

nelsonmandela 6y ago
That was in regards to following the diary step for step - Farmers plowing food back into the fields, enactment of minimum wage laws, booming house prices followed by a massive crash with nobody attending auctions, booming stock market with massive unemployment.
octodog 6y ago
The snark in this comment is completely unnecessary. It is better for everyone if you make your point in a more constructive manner.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- bondarchuk 6y ago
  Rant incoming. I, for one, appreciate it. This thing on HN where you have to beat around the bush and phrase your sentences objectively and in a general way, when everybody knows that you are just talking about a specific instance, saying things like "if you [x] then someone may respond [y]" when it is clear that someone literally said [x] so you can just say [y] in reply.. All that stuff is incredibly tiring to read IMHO. If you just want to call out someone's bullshit you should be able to do so in a straightforward manner and in a tone that corresponds with "calling out someone's bullshit". If we could just be a little bit more honest here I think it would be an improvement.
  - 6y ago

imutemyteam 6y ago

I really doubt that the backpacker community was the major labor source in Australia.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]